The passing of Quincy Jones on November 3rd, 2024, was mourned not only by individual fellow artists but by the entire music industry.

First as a trumpeter and bandleader, later as a composer, arranger, conductor, and record producer, he enjoyed a stellar seven-decade career. He received 28 Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award, and was nominated seven times for Academy Awards, and four times for Golden Globe Awards.

A consummate musician, he also loved life, and established lasting friendships with many of the artists with whom he worked – Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Corea, and especially, Frank Sinatra.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born at 20h40 CST on 13 March 1933 in Chicago. His mother was a bank officer who managed an apartment complex, while his father was a semi-pro baseball player and a carpenter who inspired Quincy’s life-long work ethic.

His horoscope has a Libra ascendant with two strong grahas in the kendras. A swa-rashi Saturn in the 4th house forms one of the esteemed Mahapurusha yogas, ie, Shasha yoga. Saturn is also the dispositor of lagnesh Venus, and is strong in a kendra, thus fulfilling the conditions for Parvata yoga, reinforcing the theme of leadership.

His 10th lord Moon is relatively bright (three days after full moon) in the lagna, aspected only by Saturn, suggesting a hard-won career of relative autonomy. Between the Moon and Saturn, both strong in kendras, the pair form one of the signatures for a career in the arts and entertainment world.

His lagnesh Venus is in the 5th house of creative effort and entertainment, where it forms three desirable yogas. The first is with Rahu who becomes a proxy for trinal 5th lord Saturn, while Venus acts as kendra 1st lord to form a nodal Raja yoga. The second yoga involves the mutual aspect between Venus and Mars; here Venus plays the role of a trinal 1st house lord to combine with kendra 7th house lord Mars to form a Dharma-Karma (1/7) Adhipati yoga. The third yoga employs Venus and Mars once more; Venus again plays the role of a trinal 1st house lord, whereas Mars assumes its other role as 2nd house (money) lord to form a Dhana (1/2) yoga.

In the latter two yogas, Mars is strong, being bright in its retrograde phase. And with lagnesh Venus as the linchpin of three favorable yogas in the 5th house, this clearly points the way to a creative, sociable and financially successful individual.

As if this evidence wasn’t already sufficient, there’s another Dhana yoga formed by trinal 9th house lord Mercury associated with 11th house (income) lord Sun.

The Sun and Jupiter form a Parivartana yoga between upachaya lords of the 6th and 11th houses. Although for some people this can manifest as a combination for “frenemies,” ie, friends who become enemies, in Quincy’s case it seems to have worked the other way around, wherein even his competitors and doubters were won over by his personal charm and consummate professionalism. Independent of the “frenemies” theme, the 6/11 Parivartana is also a signature for worldly success, eg, by overcoming opposition and achieving ones’ goals.

Quincy’s love life was, to say the least, active and robust. He was married three times and had seven children with five different women. Among the kama-sthanas his 3rd lord Jupiter and 7th lord Mars associate in the 11th, joined by Ketu, the latter influence implying his attraction to “foreign” women. Reinforcing this theme, karaka Venus is in a Saturn sign and is aligned on the Rahu-Ketu axis. His most notable relationships were with American actress Peggy Lipton, and with German actress Nastassja Kinski.

His relationships with his children were affectionate and lasting. Note his lagnesh Venus in the 5th house where it forms multiple yogas and is aspected by both kama lords.

Artistry rather than wealth was his life’s ambition, but he was fortunate in having positive horoscopic indications (aside from two Dhana yogas) to enjoy a good income after his career was established. The Yogi point, which is derived by adding the longitude of the Sun, the Moon, and a constant of 93deg20min, is found at 15SG17 in his 3rd house. One interpretation suggests that wealth arises from the exercise of artistic talents.

Using the Yogi point as a springboard, its nakshatra lord Venus becomes the Yogi, a wealth-manifesting graha. This is especially potent in Quincy’s horoscope, since lagnesh Venus already forms three yogas, one of which is a Dhana yoga. Meanwhile, the Yogi point’s rashi lord Jupiter becomes the Duplicate Yogi, strong in the 11th house and involved in a Parivartana yoga. Finally, the sambandha between Venus and Jupiter joins the Yogi and Duplicate Yogi in positive houses to further substantiate the promise of wealth.

Quincy’s horoscope also serves as an example for another little-known wealth indicator, the Indu lagna. Without burdening the reader, suffice to say that the analysis requires identifying the lord of the 9th house from both the ascendant and the Moon, which in Quincy’s case is Mercury in each instance. Thereafter, by adding points attributed (8) to Mercury twice (sum 16) and expunging multiples of 12 (net 4), we identify the 4th house as the domain of both the Udaya and Chandra Indu lagnas, which we can think of as a “power zone” for wealth. In Quincy’s case, this takes flight because the Indu lagnas’ dispositor Saturn forms Shasha yoga and aspects both the lagna and the Moon.

Quincy was born into a Rahu dasha, which ran up until age 6. He was introduced to music by his mother who sang religious songs, and a next-door neighbor who played piano.

During his Jupiter dasha, Quincy adopted the trumpet as his instrument of choice and formed a band with high school classmates. He won a scholarship to university and transferred a year later to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. At age 20, he joined Lional Hampton’s jazz band for a European tour, the first of many such tours with several other jazz orchestras. During this same dasha, he also moved to Paris to study composition and music theory with the renowned teacher Nadia Boulanger. He later settled in New York to work as both a studio and live gig musician, and eventually took a job as musical director for Mercury Records.

His big breaks came during his Saturn dasha. In 1961 he was promoted to Vice-President of Mercury Records. In the same year, director Sidney Lumet invited him to compose music for The Pawnbroker, the first of almost 40 major motion picture scores. Following that, Quincy left Mercury and moved to Los Angeles, after which he was in constant demand as a composer. In the 1960s, he worked as an arranger for Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Nana Mouskouri, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, and Dinah Washington. He also produced all four million-selling singles for (“It’s My Party”) Lesley Gore. His work with Sinatra segued from a professional relationship to a warm friendship that lasted decades. When Sinatra died, he left Quincy his personal ring.

His health was for the most part good throughout his life except for August 1974 when he suffered a brain aneurysm. Doctors at the time gave him a 1% chance of survival. But he had two back-to-back brain operations, the first to remove the existing aneurysm in one half of his brain, and a second operation to remove the threat of a second aneurysm on the other side of his brain. This occurred during Saturn dasha Mars bhukti.

In his rashi chart, Saturn afflicts his lagna, while Mars afflicts his lagnesh Venus. In his D6 Shashtamsha, Mars is the lagnesh in the 3rd house (regarded as a dusthana in Seshadri Iyer’s system of amsha vichara) associated with malefics Rahu/Ketu. In his D8 Ashtamsha, Saturn and Mars afflict each other while Mars again associates with Rahu/Ketu. Despite the gravity of the operations, Quincy recovered and was released from the hospital, albeit with the proviso that he should never play trumpet again, for fear the pressure induced in his nasal and auditory canals might dislodge the steel plates now installed in his skull.

In Mercury dasha, Quincy began to diversify into pop music. He produced Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad albums, each of which sold 20M, 65M and 45M copies, respectively, making Quincy the most powerful record producer in the industry at that time. He used his influence to gather multiple artists for the fund-raising single “We Are the World.” He also founded Qwest Entertainment to handle movie, video and music production.

Thereafter, in both his Ketu and Venus dashas, Quincy continued to be engaged in a wide variety of projects – mostly producing music, but also appearing in movies, television, documentaries, and podcasts, along with his participation in various cultural and charitable causes dear to his heart.

In so many ways, Quincy lived up to the work ethic of his father’s rhyming motto: “Once a task is just begun, never leave until it’s done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.” Well done, Quincy!

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Alan Annand is a Vedic astrologer, palmist and author. He’s a graduate of the British Faculty of Astrological Studies and was for many years their sole tutor for students in USA and Canada. After being introduced to jyotish, he was certified by the American College of Vedic Astrology, and went on to enjoy advanced instruction from Hart de Fouw. Aside from consulting and tutoring, he has long been a professional writer, straddling the corporate and creative worlds. His New Age Noir crime novels feature an astrologer protagonist whom one reviewer has dubbed “Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope.” His books on Vedic astrology – Kala Sarpa, Parivartana Yoga, and Stellar Astrology, Vols 1-4 – have been praised for the quality of their research and writing. His latest book – Kama Yoga: Love, Marriage & Sexuality in Jyotish – is a complete guide to personal relationships as seen through the lens of Vedic astrology.

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